Sarah Mullally becomes first woman appointed head of the Anglican Church

The bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, was named archbishop of Canterbury Friday, becoming the first woman to head the Church of England and be spiritual leader of Anglicans, the British government announced.

Mullally, 63, a nurse and mother of two, replaces Justin Welby, who was forced to resign in November 2024 due to his handling of a physical and sexual assault scandal.

Mullally, who gave up her nursing job in 2004 to take up the priesthood full-time, becomes the 106th archbishop of Canterbury.

"Peace and trust in God"

In a statement picked up by AFP, the archbishop acknowledged the "great responsibility" of her new post, but said she feels a sense of "peace and trust in God" to fulfill it.

The previous leader of Anglicanism worldwide, Justin Welby, announced in November that he would step down from his duties on Jan. 6.

Welby, 68, faced days of pressure to resign following allegations that his institution covered up years of physical and sexual assaults on minors by a lawyer linked to the church.

The former archbishop of Canterbury officiated at several major royal events in recent years, including the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of Charles III.

The black cloud of John Smyth

Between the 1970s and the mid-2010s, John Smyth, a lawyer who headed a charity linked to the Anglican Church and who organized vacation camps, sexually abused 130 children and young people in the United Kingdom and in Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe and South Africa, where he settled and died in 2018, aged 75, without being tried.

The institution was officially informed of these facts in 2013, but many perpetrators knew about them since the 1980s and kept them silent as part of a "cover-up campaign," an investigation commissioned by the Anglican Church itself concluded.

The report also concluded that the then-archbishop of Canterbury "could and should have reported" the violence committed by the lawyer to the police beginning in 2013, when he became the leader of the Church of England.